Better website performance and higher quality ad units displayed while you enjoy Vulkk’s content! The partnership with Mediavine will allow me to focus on what I enjoy most – creating my content, instead of dealing with a number of ad networks and constantly worrying about page speed loads.
Hi friends,
I would like to share with you the results of something I have been working on and preparing for the past three weeks – my Partnership with Mediavine. Now, if you run an AdBlock on VULKK.com, you will see little to no change today, compared to what it was like before. I have a special paragraph in the end of this blog post that I hope you will check out :)
So, let’s start… from the beginning!
Most of you are probably very well aware that VULKK.com was a dream come true, when I launched it in the Summer of 2015. It was a small website, easy to maintain, mostly dedicated to my videos with almost nothing on the side in terms of news and guides. The hosting bills were very small and easily covered by my own real-life job income.
Today, however, the website (and I :P) cover a wide variety of topics including my favorite franchise Star Wars as well as a number of video games – once again, a special selection of titles that I have spent countless of hours enjoying and researching. The expenses today, including hosting, CDN, premium services (plugins and tools) and so on are far above what I could cover by myself. That is the reason why you see the ads on the website – they help me pay the bills and along with my Patreon campaign and Amazon Influencer links, I am able to cover all that and even set some to the side for the future expansions and upgrades.
The biggest problem when I started serving ads was that I never wanted them to be intrusive, overwhelming and at the same time I only wanted them to be of high quality and interesting for you. So, like everybody else, I started with Adsense. Later on I added Amazon CPM ads as well. That was fine up to a point, but managing multiple ad networks and creating a good order for your ad sources is no easy task.
My Patrons probably remember that earlier this month, for a week or so, I was virtually silent on Discord and my YouTube subscribers might remember that the channel had no new uploads during this time either. This was all a result of my desire to learn how to better control and manage the ads you see – I started learning Google DFP (DoubleClick for Publishers). Learning it was, believe it or not, the easy part. The time that is required and consumed by managing ads and ad networks is insane. Simply impossible. Then I decided to make a drastic change.
New ads you say?
As of 23rd of March my Partnership with Mediavine is a fact. They are a company that specializes in full management of ads inventory of websites and blogs. They take care of my advertising space by selling it to their partners and I care only about my own content. Of course, this isn’t free. Part of the earnings go to them, the rest is my own revenue – the very same money that pays VULKK.com’s bills.
It’s too early to talk about income differences, but once a month or two have passed, I will be happy to share some more insights. If things are going well, you will likely feel the result of that in more improvements on VULKK.com, more Giveaways and perhaps even some desperately needed equipment that I have been trying to save up money for for so long :P
I choose Mediavine, because they have a very solid reputation and are not just a typical ad network. They have a big team of engineers, social experts and a really great Customer Service. I can’t count the number of emails and conversations prior to the launch of this Partnership between me and several different Mediavine team members.
And why should you care?
While the main reason for this step was to leave me free of the unpleasant duties of managing advertisements (I so very much hated this part of owning a website, D’OH!), but also to be able to provide you with high quality ads that will actually be of use to you and not just sit there to take valuable space on the pages and posts.
You don’t have to care, but I would be thankful if you do. Mediavine’s partners target mostly the North America and Western Europe markets and if you are situated somewhere in these regions, you will actually likely see more ads than, for example, I do on my own website in my own household. Your feedback on what ads you see and how friendly, useful or annoying they are, will help me shape the ads content on the website in the future. Also, always report ads you consider to be inappropriate.
It would be of tremendous help if you could spend a minute or two and write me some feedback – how do you find the new ads, how do you find the experience on the website now compared to before.
As I’ve said, it is possible some of you may see more ad units on the longer posts (usually my guides) than before, but since this is now a period of testing, changes are being made constantly to ensure smooth and nice user experience.
A note to AdBlock users
I completely understand the need for AdBlock tools. I myself use one all the time. What I do, however, is I disable it on various destinations that I care about, visit every day and enjoy their content. Examples include some local sports news websites, PC Hardware tech sites and, of course, YouTube. I have been a normal consumer and visitor for such a long time before I had a taste of what it is like to be on the other side of a website and create content for others to enjoy. However, I know how important the user experience is. I too block nasty and annoying websites that serve more ads than content. I would never tolerate this, nor should you!
With all of this said, please, take a moment to consider disabling AdBlock on VULKK.com. Check out how is your personal experience on the website with the ads on. If an ad is bothering you, report it. If you have something to say – a complaint, a suggestion or just a thought – leave a comment or write me an email if it’s of a more personal note.
